Welcome to the second giveaway in our YD Holiday Giveaway Series! (Missed the first? It was an exclusive through our newsletter. Sign up here so you don’t miss the next one.)
It’s likely you already know yoga is the gift that keeps on giving. Well, we’re super pleased to be giving you even more of a chance to make that happen!
WIN: YogaUOnline is offering free three-month passes to their online Yoga Practice Channel for three lucky winners. Yes, that’s three, as in three go free!
Practice yoga online with wonderful yoga teachers like Natasha Rizopoulos, Cindy Lee, Sarah Platt Finger of Ishta Yoga and Iyengar yoga teachers like Julie Gudmestad, Gabriel Halpern, and Carrie Owerko. Or check out YogaU’s monthly practice series for December – a great selection of R&R practices when you need extra help do deal with holiday stress.
If your aim is to learn more about keeping your body healthy throughout life, check out practices with leading experts in yoga therapeutics like Dr. Baxter Bell, Ellen Saltonstall (co-author of Yoga for Osteoporosis), and coming soon – Judith Hanson Lasater and her daughter Lizzie Lasater. Plus, much more! Deepen your yoga practice or expand your teaching skills with more than 150+ hours of online practices.
TO ENTER: Sometimes our yoga can get sidetracked in the midst of all the holiday fun/madness often making home practice that much more difficult, but oh so necessary. Luckily, life also has a way of handing us those little reminders telling us to get…back…on…your…mat. What’s one of your reminders? Maybe it’s a sweet moment with your children…or just missing that dang 50% off holiday sale! Share with us your own life’s little reminders to stay present – post in the comments to enter.
Giveaway ends 11:59pm Tuesday, December 15th. Three winners will be chosen at random and announced soon after. Good luck!
Interested in learning more? Check out YogaUOnline’s other great Holiday offers for yoga peeps here
Update: Congrats to JJ, Laura and Aaron! Thanks to everyone for entering. We hope your home practice has been inspired.
When my shoulders start telling me to go to yoga.
When I feel frazzled and pulled in multiple directions, that’s my cue to focus on my breath, meditate and get on my mat.
When I crave the stillness that only a yoga practice provides! Happens often within the holiday busyness.
“What’s one of your reminders?”
My lovely wife has a way of letting me know it’s time…..usually by saying, “Don’t you have a class to goto?” 😉
When my anxiety rises and lose contact with the present moment, I try to tell myself “this is not an emergency.” It helps slow down my brain and reminds me to focus on the present.
Yoga is really a very healthy and beneficial exercise. Interesting post.
Every time I feel my heart starting to pound in my chest and my stomach start to roll. Deep breath.
When I am shopping not far from USQ and I see that human-sized poster of that chick in a pants pattern I own and purchased from a store, an athleisure store that used to have my back—but in that store window; but she’s in a circus clown inverted pose … yeah, those are the moments I need my style and locus of yoga …
I have a lot of issues with lower back pain and tight muscles. I know its times to get on the mat when I get that achy pain in my back and shoulders.
My biggest reminder is my muscles from the class before. Lately my love of yoga has become an obsession and I will take any opportunity to practice even more
My reminder is when I feel stressed and my sleep suffers.
YOLO means you only live once, but also means you only have 1 time to experience life
During the holidays there is delightful food everywhere-starting with breakfast breads that my wife bakes. I’m not one for self-denial, so I get my practice in early in the morning. That way I can indulge-wisely and without self-recrimination-for the rest the day.
Odd little aches and pains – usually my hip flexors. I can avoid/ignore for so long, but it’s so much better if I spend even a little time on the mat!
When I wake up in the morning and crave the peace of a morning yoga ritual
Every time I see my young daughter I realise that my life is not for me alone and caring for myself is also caring for her. Yoga is a way to help me be around and present for the longest time possible.
This is kind of a long story, but I’ll make it quick. I went through a long period of depression. Not for any actual ‘reason’–that’s, you know, not how depression works, and the worst part of depression is sitting there with a list of all the good things you have in your life and…still being depressed.
Anyway, I was lying in bed one morning just trying to get the will to get up and I thought ‘I want to be happy like those yoga people always seem’. I thought it was just, you know, some hype, the way yoga is represented in the West as thin young blonde smiling women. But for some reason that idea really took root, despite the fact I was not thin, young, nor blonde, and definitely not smiling, and the next day, I walked into a nearby yoga studio.
I…hated it. I sucked, because I was a knotted tense mess, as you could imagine, and I felt so tired afterwards I’d just go to bed. But I kept going for a month, then forced myself for another month, because I’d started noticing that despite how awful the class was (to be honest, Bikram is just not my bag but I didn’t realize that yet), I felt better, emotionally. More stable, more able to handle things. Now, I go to the studio 2-3 times a week, and do a home practice on other days, and I have a reminder every time I get on the mat, noticing how my mood lifts. No matter how I feel when I step on my mat, by the time I’m done (even just a quick 20 minute practice) I feel calmer, centered, and energized. Now I laugh when I think about ‘those yoga people’, because I am one!
Sorry it’s so long a story.
Unfortunately it’s back pain that keeps me coming back to the mat. Would love to strengthen my home practice.
When I start feeling stressed out about everything and so much to do, and know it’s not PMS, I then realize it’s been several days since I’ve hit my mat. Unfortunately I don’t have much of a home practice at this time so it’s easy to forget the studio when life gets too hectic.
When I feel that familiar feeling of anxiety in my chest….
When I feel my shoulders touching my ears, my back is hunching and I realize I was holding my breath!!! Yoga HELP!!!!!
Every morning to check in and greet the day, and again at the end of the day to take stock and breathe!
Life’s reminder to me is when the migraine’s come back – time to refocus and find a class or take time to meditate & breathe.
My restless mind, an hour (or more) on my yoga mat is the only things that can effectively calm it down and clear it out.
When I start getting cranky and my back gets really sore… I know I haven’t been taking care of myself.
When I notice that I have barely paused for breath all day.